


Unravel

by the_seaworthy_muffin



Series: Merthur Week 2020 Prompt Fills [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Heartbreak, Hopeful Ending, Lies and secrets, M/M, Merlin's Magic Revealed (Merlin), Reconciliation, Temporary Freya/Merlin, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28314387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_seaworthy_muffin/pseuds/the_seaworthy_muffin
Summary: Merlin grits his jaw. “I am not going.”“Then Arthur will die,” Freya says.“But I cannot forgive him.”“Could you live without him?” the question is gentle, but it drives into Merlin’s heart like a lance.“No,” Merlin chokes, feeling hot tears pool in his eyes. The magic threading through the grass around him flares in concern, and a single white anemone blooms through their cracks, tender, questioning, apologetic.Merlin brushes a finger over it, then buries his face in his hands, and sobs, and sobs, and sobs.Written for Merthur Week 2020, Day 5: “Any other lies left to tell me?” + Angst.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Merthur Week 2020 Prompt Fills [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2066679
Comments: 10
Kudos: 87
Collections: Merthur Week 2020





	Unravel

**Author's Note:**

> FIRST OF ALL: (Slightly Belated) Merry Christmas, everyone! We have laws forbidding more than five people meeting at the same time where we are, so we had my grandparents coming around at intervals. The Virus is driving the world crazy. Hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas despite it all!! This fic is my tiny contribution to all you amazing people in the Merlin fandom. Stay happy and safe <3<3<3  
> This fic does have angst in spades (Though it's not a terrible tear-jerking bad ending- it actually does end on a sort-of hopeful note- so not to worry too much.) but the Merthur in this is more implied than explicit, so I hope this does count as a prompt fill. :)  
> That being said, please enjoy!!

1.

“So you’re a sorcerer,” Arthur says.

The words echo eerily in the utter silence of the clearing, the burnt and smoking corpses of bandits lying about them like so many mangled dolls. Merlin grits his teeth; nods.

This was not how he had wanted Arthur to find out. But, then again, he isn’t quite sure he could remember the last time life had been so kind.

Arthur’s face is calm and cold and regal as he nods back. It is the face Merlin is used to seeing wielded against unpleasant courtiers and wayward knights, distant as it is composed.

Fog curls and nips about Merlin’s ankles as he turns and struggles after Arthur, who strides through the forest with a calculated, reckless vengeance.

“We’d thought you’d been captured, sire,” Leon breathes, as soon as they make their way back to the campsite. Arthur gives Merlin a look, long and considering and unreadable, and replies:

“We must have been lucky; all we came across was a startled pheasant.”

Now, thinking back, Merlin supposes that must have been the first thread. A tapestry is a beautiful thing, one picture melding seamlessly onto another, but once the first thread begins to unravel━

One tug is all it takes.

And then it all comes crashing down.

2.

“I hear Camelot has fallen,” Freya whispers, trailing a finger down Merlin’s cheek. Her fingers are long and pale and smell like water-lilies on the lake, and though Merlin had once loved them, adored them, now the scent makes bile rise in his throat.

Merlin hums, noncommittal.

“You will not go?” Freya asks, though Merlin knows that she knows the answer already.

A flash of red, darker than blood- a golden dragon on a bed of crimson- smoke, black and billowing and all-consuming, lapping hungrily at the bedrock of Camelot like a hungry hound.

This is what Merlin has seen, for his gifts are many, and sometimes the lake-water insists on showing him things better left unseen. It is terrible. But it is not as terrible as the poison that rushes through Merlin’s veins at the mere thought, quick, burning, terrible.

“I have not forgiven him yet,” is all Merlin says. Freya _tuts_ at him. Brown hair tickles his neck, drawing soft and whispering-slick across the curve of his neck. Merlin sees a glimpse of gold, a high, proud nose- afterimages of things that are not there- and hates himself more than ever.

“Mayhap,” the Lady of the Lake shrugs. “But maybe you fear the opposite is true.”

_Leave._

_I never wish to lay my eyes upon you again._

“No,” Merlin replies, fierce, and wraps his arms around Freya to tug her flush against him. He crashes his lips against hers, and Freya’s lips part in welcome, warm and soft and lush, but her eyes are sad and understanding.

Merlin hears the echo of truth in her words, and it tears him apart.

He is broken, he thinks. Unraveling.

One thread at a time.

Slow, but inexorable.

3.

Three days after Arthur hears everything Merlin has to say, he summons him to his chambers. Merlin goes, hope churning against dread, whipping sickeningly about the linings of his stomach, turning his knees to lead.

Arthur’s face is perfectly calm, just, polite.

The mask of a king.

A tray of food lies nigh-untouched upon his table, and a decanter of wine sloshes half-empty beside it.

“Tell me, Merlin,” he says. “Was anything I ever did ever mine alone? Or was I nothing but a puppet, dancing along to your tunes?”

_Puppet._

Betrayal knifes sharp and unexpected through Merlin’s veins, and he strides up to grasp Arthur’s shoulders, hard. His fingers are stark white against the deep blue of Arthur’s robes, and Merlin feels rather than sees Arthur’s hand twitch towards the concealed knife in his sleeve.

Another spool of thread drops.

Unraveling.

“No, Arthur, never,” he grits. “You- can’t you see it? _It was all you_. I wouldn’t have been able to do half the things you have achieved, with magic or without. You are my king.” _You are my_ \- no, not that word, not yet; there are some things, Merlin knows, better left unsaid. Instead: “You are all that matters.”

Silence.

Arthur’s mask breaks down, just a split second, and then it is back, stronger than ever. An impenetrable fortress, cooler than the harshest of winter gales.

“Any other lies to tell me, Merlin?”

Anger. Resentment. Betrayal. If Merlin has ever told any lies, every- it has been for Arthur. Only for him. And now Arthur stands from his battlement, eyeing Merlin as he would a foreign courtier plotting to stick a dagger up his throat, and-

“I know about the dragon.”

Merlin is lost for words.

Betrayal is what he holds on to. It is the least painful to consider.

“ _Arthur_ ,” he scrapes out, and Arthur turns his back upon him.

“Leave me.” Cool. Harsh. Impersonal.

“If you bid me leave now,” Merlin grits, “you will never see me again. It was always for you, Arthur. Don’t you see? It was only ever for you.”

The briefest of pauses.

“So be it.”

No; not unraveling, not anymore.

_Unraveled_ , by the only man Merlin would ever let him do so.

Merlin leaves for the Lake that very night. He bellows out for Kilgharrah in the old tongue, churns up a storm and calls lightning from the very sky. It is his last goodbye, perhaps; a goodbye laced with hurt and confusion and agony.

When the storm recedes, not a single stone is left out of place.

Perhaps Merlin still cares too much. He always has.

4.

Whispers of war and strife filter into the Lake. And then, the biggest news of all:

The proud King of Camelot, captured. The sorceress stole into the fortress under the cover of night, they whisper. They say the King will be executed this very next moon, and a new age will come- an age without executions, without persecution, a land where knights will cower under the fingertips of sorcerers.

Merlin feels the magic dancing across his veins- _in_ them- and knows, without quite understanding how, that Morgana is naught but a child compared to him. He is magic itself, eternal, ever-changing, endless; no mortal sorcerer will be his match.

“I have come to say farewell,” Freya says. She is beautiful, ethereal as a goddess in her shimmering gown of silver. She smells like water-lilies upon a pond, and the scent still makes bile rise in Merlin’s throat.

Merlin grits his jaw. “I am not going.”

“Then Arthur will die,” Freya says.

“But I cannot forgive him.”

“Could you live without him?” the question is gentle, but it drives into Merlin’s heart like a lance.

“No,” Merlin chokes, feeling hot tears pool in his eyes. The magic threading through the grass around him flares in concern, and a single white anemone blooms through their cracks, tender, questioning, apologetic.

Merlin brushes a finger over it, then buries his face in his hands, and sobs, and sobs, and sobs.

5.

Merlin doesn’t know how he might look to others. Unsettling, in the least. Terrifying is the most likely.

Eyes shining burnished gold, sparks fading from his fingertips. Morgana’s fortress lying in rubble all around them, and Merlin in the middle, a sorcerer, tall and terrible, surveying the ruin he has wrought.

Arthur is- painfully unchanged. Merlin takes in Arthur’s bruised, bloodied face, hair matted with blood and grime, and his magic rises without conscious thought. A single brush, and Arthur’s skin is unblemished again, robes whole and sparkling-clean.

Merlin turns to leave.

“Merlin.”

Unfair. How fast that voice could unravel him- how fast it can build him up.

Merlin does not turn.

“Don’t go.”

“I am not your hunting-dog, Arthur.” Merlin’s voice trembles for all that he is clamping down upon it, magic roiling terse and unsteady under his skin. “You made your choice, all those years ago. I am not your _puppet_ to dance to your every whim.”

A long pause, during which neither of them speak. Then━

“I know.”

Arthur’s voice is more unsteady than Merlin has ever heard it. The closest, perhaps, to an apology that he will ever get from his king.

Merlin turns. Merlin sees the cracks in Arthur’s mask, again, but this time he looks closer, beyond the cool composure, beyond the distance in his eyes.

He sees _hurt_ , confusion, regret, shifting like so many floes of lava across that strong face. But now he realizes- perhaps Arthur had always been broken, as well. Perhaps he was simply better at patching himself up an acting whole.

Two sides of the same coin, the dragon has said. Two mangled tapestries, perhaps, is more suiting. Always unraveling on one side, frantically patching themselves up from the other. Merlin wants to laugh and cry.

Wants to shake Arthur, force every single moment of pain Merlin has ever felt upon him, but wants to wrap his arms around him and never let go ever again.

“Stay,” Arthur whispers.

_Maybe,_ Merlin thinks _. Maybe._

_Fin._


End file.
